It *is* fun and heady too!
” 1. Intoxicating or stupefying.
2. Tending to upset the mind or the balance of senses.
3. Serving to exhilarate.”

All the teaching aides in my daughter’s school were laid off due to cuts in California budget. We are down to teachers and volunteers.

The sooner we turn to each other instead of corporate and other institutions the better off we all will be.

I see not no help for the working people of this country coming from our national government. It’s put to rest my belief in the hope promised by Obama. I will admit, this alone has unbalanced my senses profoundly! Many will be tempted to place their trust back into these institutions before whom Washington grovels.

Hang on! Peace, Resolve & Victory to the people!

-mason

One of your best dispatches, Doug.. I could sense the enthusiasm in your voice as you paint a wonderful vision. It’s contagious. I wish you the best of success with your new book!

Peace.

I have been following your website and comments for some time now. It is interesting to me that you espouse all this knowledge – but what exactly do you know about business and finance? If you did “predict” our current economic turmoil, might I ask why your book has not yet been reviewed by major papers? As someone who attests to the need for “communal action” and “helping each other” it certainly sounds like you are too wrapped up in your own supposed knowledge. What exactly are you doing for your community and the community-at-large?

treeves – based on my listening to and reading of Douglas’s ideas, I would say he “predicted” that the corporate financial superstructure is a rigged game that is unsustainable without bubbles and bailouts that those with power always come through with their power intact. He, like many of us, are hopeful that this bubble burst could put more people, and eventually society as a whole, on a more humane, less materialistic, more sustainable path that will make more people more happy than what we’ve been stuck with of late. I think your implication that DR is all talk and no action might be appropriate in a town square debate, but appears silly on the internet. And while I am sure DR is doing things in his local community that accord with the critiques and values he is espousing, what’s it to me (other than a potential example of good, practical ideas)? I do know that DR is contributing a valuable body of research and understanding that will help interested people see the nature and limits of our current way of life, as well as the glimmers of a path to a better one. That, to me, is doing something for the community-at-large.

Brian,
Thanks for your response. Regardless of planting ideas and hoping to influence people to act differently and adopt new ideas, I still have to wonder what DR is doing in his daily life to promulgate his ideas. It is difficult to “practice what you preach” and I can’t imagine that he is any less of a “consumer” then the rest of us during what is a difficult time. For me, knwoing someone is practicing in his/her own life has more validity in terms of planting the seeds for others.

T — I hear what you’re saying. As I have looked into it, I have found that there are a surprising number of ways to be less of a corporate consumer than the flow of society dictates. Almost all the food we eat comes from two local farmers with CSAs. Reducing one’s meat intake can have a dramatic reduction in externalized corporate/petroleum usage, and of course driving less does the same. If hundreds of thousands of people only ate meat on weekends and reduced their driving by half, the corporate overclass would freak out. Other things we do: buy bread from local bakeries or make our own, buy beer made within a couple hundred miles (planning to learn to make our own), grow some food in a garden (and learning how to preserve food for winter), buy as many clothes and furniture as possible from thrift stores or get from the local “freecycle”. My wife makes our soap and laundry detergent and cleaning stuff. We also installed a solar electric system on our small commercial building. These might not sound like a whole lot, and it’s true it is a matter of degree at this point, but practices like these really do reduce our reliance on the corporate consumer supermarket.